In 2021 the U.S. government stopped laughing off strange objects in the sky and started counting them. What followed was not proof of aliens, but something rarer: an official paper trail of honest uncertainty.

On an October night in 1967, a fishing village watched lights fall into the sea. Police, the Coast Guard and Navy divers went looking. The file is still marked unsolved.

In September 1976, two Iranian F-4 Phantoms closed on a brilliant light over Tehran — and their instruments and weapons died on approach. A US intelligence file calls the report outstanding. Nothing calls it solved.

In 1986 a veteran 747 captain reported an object he said dwarfed his jumbo jet pacing him across the Alaskan twilight. The FAA wrote everything down — and could not confirm a thing.

In 1989 and 1990 thousands of Belgians, many of them police officers, reported a vast silent triangle. The Air Force scrambled fighters, published its radar data — and never identified what it chased.

Over two nights in December 1980, American servicemen at a NATO base in England chased lights through the trees. Their deputy commander sent an official memo to the British government. It has never been explained.

In November 2004, a US Navy cruiser tracked impossible radar returns for days. Then two fighter pilots saw the thing with their own eyes — and the official file remains open.